Monday, April 25, 2016

In a finishing mood

I want to get started on a couple of new projects - including a request from a friend, which I hardly ever do - but first there has to be some finishing up and some clearing out. I threw two quilt tops into the bin that I was never going to finish and really didn't like. One was half quilted but still it went - I took the safety pins out first then ditched it. And yesterday I did some quilting, on the red scrappy one that I pieced a few months ago.

It was awesome because I got a chance to use my new book. I did just a straight line on the red, and then did different designs in each of the octagon / snowball blocks. You really can't even tell the quilting is there because the fabrics are all so busy, but it was a good chance to try every single design in the book.

I did all the ones for circles, and hexagons, and even diamonds with a bit of finessing before moving onto the squares, which was a bit harder, so I went back to the circles and invented my own variations. This is a great book for me; lots of ideas, which I struggle with sometimes. Some of the designs worked better than others but that is exactly what this type of quilt is for!

We've had a pretty quiet second week of school holidays - number two son had four days at a holiday camp that he went to last year and loved. Actual camping in a tent, and lots of fires, and bush walks, and optional activities. Only thirty kids and much better rather than the regimented school camp, which he found a bit oppressive. He's so like me .... it was so funny in Melbourne because he had the same reaction to the big city that I did when I was eleven - he just fell in love with it. He is the same age as I was when my family took a trip to Wellington for the first time; and I just remember how amazing I thought it was after growing up in a small town - somewhere old, and grotty, and cool, and people lived above shops, and concrete, and graffiti and I so desperately wanted to be a part of it, like the cool kids.

And my younger son had exactly the same reaction - we were walking along a street somewhere very unprepossessing but very urban and he was all "this is SO COOL Mum" ... now Melbourne isn't exactly New York (and Wellington sure as hell isn't, not now and certainly not back in the early 1980s) but I think if you have a taste for the city then you find your city where you can. I moved to Wellington six years later to go to university, so I think we'll lose him to the bright lights at some stage, which is fine by me. I can always go visit.